Ok, you guys who have been in the military, lets hear some of your stories from you time in the service. Funny, poignant, wry, just keep them clean. Some of the best stories I've heard are from my ex-military buddies.

One my dad told:
He was a C-130 driver in Vietnam. Someone on a forward army base parked a row of helicopters neatly but too close to the fight line. One of dad's fellow pilots landed there, and took out 3 helicopters and 10 feet off the wing tip. Dad's CO called him in and asked for advice. Dad told him that they had to get the plane out by sundown. After dark either charlie would shell it or the Army would blow it up to prevent a shelling. Dad asked for a maintenance crew, 2 flight crews and a new wing tip. They flew up there, repaired the plane and flew it out. End of the story is that after they left, no one got on the radio to talk about how the plane was gone so charlie didn't know. That night the base got one of their worst shellings of the war.

 

I'll toss one of my favorites in here.

While working in Inspection Dock for RF-4c's, we came in one morning to find a young, t-shirted (military), fellow working on the aircraft we were slated to perform an inspection on.

We hadn't met him, and as we got in newbies all the time, we didn't think much of it. We went to work without even introducing ourselves and the Dock Chief didn't bother to mention it when he came in.

While watching the obviously incompetent(mechanically) fellow make a mess out of the screws on a highly-stressed wing panel, one of my buddies, hoping to save having to fight with those screws himself, walked over to the "newbie" and said, "look here,(nick-name for richard)head, let me show you how to do that. You're gonna (bad word) them up!"

He showed the new guy how to remove them, and he was most appreciative.

About 2 hours later,still with no one talking to him or minding him much, we went on break. He followed. As we weren't allowed to leave our dock out of uniform, we all donned our shirts (rank) and headed toward the break room.

I would pay a lot of money to have a picture of my buddies face when the "Newbie" turned out to be our new captain/Squadron Commander!

He walked up to my buddy and said, "I'll try not to (bad word)anything up while I'm here." He let my buddy off the hook with a big laugh.He worked with us the rest of the week learning our jobs, I suppose to see things from our angle.

He was also prior enlisted.

He was the coolest Commander we had the entire time I was in!

I seen him a number of times after that and we both laughed out loud everytime about it!

Chuck

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 13-Sep-02 AT 10:52 PM (EST)]This is a story my Dad told me a few times.

My Dad was in Germany at the end of WW2 and had to guard german prisoners in a small town outside Berlin.Now the standard issue weapon at that time was a M1 Garand and 45 auto but my Dads unit was issued thompson machine guns.As my Dad tells it they were'nt allowed to fraternize with the towns people when off duty but my Dad and a couple of his buddys felt sorry for them.They decided to do a little hunting (with the thompsons)to help the towns people.Well he had no problem hitting the deer it was just hard to hit it with just one shot.When they got back to the town the people took the deer that he and his buddys had shot and prepared a huge meal and as my Dad put it they ate like pigs the towns folk were very apreciative.Acording to my Dad this was a good thing for quite a while till his CO found out*It was good while it lasted*his words.



Wiz

[link:www.clubfte.com/users/thewiz427/index.html|"Wiz's Place"]

 

Good ones! I'm almost afraid to tell this one. Actually a couple of things happened while on this picticular curise.

While I was in the navy, we were on a west-pac cruise heading down south of the equator to a little island for some R&R. It just so happened to be our captains last curise with us as we were going through a change of command while on our way. Well we all wanted to make a good first impression so everything was supposed to be in ship shape. And it was. Everything was going smooth until that one fatefull afternoon. I was stationed aboard a destroyer. We had 4 boilers and 2 main engines. Under normal conditions #1 fireroom supplys #1 engine room and #2 to #2. I worked in engineering in number two fireroom, (boiler room). For what ever reason, someone on the other side of the bulkhead, (wall) in #2 engine room had opened a valve and forgot to close it. It was an obscure thing that hardly anybody paid attention to and was probably opened by mistake. Well this valve somehow drained all of our condensate water and any make up water for #2 fireroom into the sea. We were losing water for our boilers fast and couldn't figure out what was happening to it all. The distilling plant could not keep up with demand. Meanwhile in #1 fireroom someone left a blowdown valve open and salted up the boilers so they could not be used so they were shut down. Now only #2 fireroom had the load. Then someone in main control, (#1 engine room) cross connected main steam as was standard procedure. This allows any one fire room to supply steam to all the main spaces, i.e. firerooms and engine rooms. But when they opened the valve they did it too fast and pulled us off line and we went dead in the water. We relit our boilers and got underway but were still loosing feed and makeup water. Anyway, we steamed our boilers to keep the ship under power as long as we could until we ran out of feedwater. In the meantime #1 fireroom had finished flushing their boilers and got one lit off. Just as they came on line, we ran out of water and had to shut down. But with everything cross connected and going to #2 engine room as well,(remember the valve) #1 fire room soon ran out of water and lost the load. Then we went dead in the water, again! No land in sight, no power, bobbing like a cork. The machinist mates were able to distill enough water to relight the boilers but it was all in vain as nobody knew about the open valve defeating our efforts. Anyway by the time someone figured out the problem we went dead in the water three times that afternoon. The change of command went on as scheduled the next day. Not the best way to make a good first impression on your new commanding officer.:P

I have another story but I'll let someone else share.

 

In the 80's, there were still a lot of aircraft around that were soon to be decommissioned and replaced by new machines and systems. Among the other holdouts, the A-4 Skyhawks of Top Gun still had IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) systems that were designed god only knows how long ago.

At intermediate maintenance in Miramar these units still came in for repair, and one fine day the Leading Petty Officer for the IFF group ordered a capacitor from the equally old maintenance manual for the box.

We came to realise that the part numbers were in fact so old that some of them had been re-assigned to other items when a very irate Senior Chief from production control threw a fit in the middle of the work center demanding: "Who the (bad word) ordered this? I want to know what dumb son of a (another bad word) sent for this mother (You guessed it, BAD WORD)!!!"

He was directed to AT2 "Zeke", and he immediately turned the air blue all around the poor guy...

"Do you wanna see what the (bad word) you spent our operational funding on, you dumb (many bad words, some of them highly inventive and colorful!)??? Come here! Follow me..."

Out in the back was a large crate, and prominently stenciled on it were the words:
"SEATS, JUMP, FOR C-130 AIRCRAFT. QUANTITY=50"

The already florid senior chief them demanded: "What the (word) were you (word)ing thinking???"

At this point, the unshakeably mild mannered and unflappable second class said:

"Actually - I was trying to get a JEEP..."


>=oD

 

My uncle had a hotel that catered to dis-abled vets with "mental" problems. One day we were sitting around chatting and a man walked in to apply to live there. One of our regulars jumped up and said, "That's the **** guard from the prison camp I was in. He was in the machine-gun tower for three years." Then he said to the German, "I always thought you wanted to shoot me, did you? You had a mean look on your face," To which the German soldier replied, "I would have shot you, if I had been issued BULLETS! The mean look was to scare you from running to the wire." Turned out the German commander had issued fake bullets to the gunners, either due to shortage or compassion. As it was, these two men became inseparable friends.